


Carnage of Cheer

by roquentine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 04:06:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8734285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roquentine/pseuds/roquentine
Summary: Mrs. Hudson's herbal soothers wreak havoc in 221B.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Seasonal Fucking Cheer Ficathon](http://roquentine19.tumblr.com/post/153761991438/welcome-to-our-seasonal-fucking-cheer-2016), prompt #7: "There is an overabundance of seasonally appropriate decor in this flat."

“John, I can’t _believe_ you didn’t notice the chauffeur’s shoes. How else do you think I knew about the citrus allergy? From the dead purple cyclamen? Ridiculous. Not to mention the victim’s elbow prosthesis...”

As he bounds up the stairs, John is fairly certain that none of that is actually what Sherlock said, but he has developed a defense mechanism that turns Sherlock’s voice into white noise as soon as he hears the words “I can’t _believe_ you didn’t notice.”

Sometimes he tries to piece it back together from his ghosting short-term memory, just to amuse himself. He’s still chuckling at “elbow prosthesis” as Sherlock jabbers on behind him when he hits the landing and starts to head into the flat, except he stops dead in the doorway.

Sherlock, too busy rolling his eyes and probably _not_ saying something about “juniper berry _salad,_ John,” actually runs into him, but John barely notices as Sherlock stumbles around him and is similarly shocked into silence.

To start with, there’s a giant red bow on the door that absolutely was not there when they left the flat this morning.

Also new: the mistletoe that’s hanging from the door frame, low enough to get caught in Sherlock’s hair. He bats it away and they both look up at it and then look at each other and then quickly look at anything but each other, and there is quite a lot of anything but to take in.

Starting with trees. There are now five trees in the sitting room. _Five._ There’s an eight-foot-tall real tree in front of the window by the sofa, a shorter skinny fake one behind John’s chair, and three different green ceramic ones on the coffee table. (All of the lights on all of the trees are blinking in random and very likely headache-inducing patterns.)

Billy is sporting his Santa hat (literally the only thing Sherlock ever does himself by way of decoration) but also now a pair of novelty reindeer antlers. The bison on the wall is covered in haphazardly strung fairy lights, plain white ones that are blessedly just _on_ and not blinking. Candy canes hang indecorously from its horns.

Not as startling a part of this display as it otherwise might be on its own is the three-foot-wide gold plastic menorah sitting on the center of their desk with what is clearly a Christmas tree skirt wrapped around its base.

There’s even a fucking _elf_ on a _shelf_ and John is kind of pleased with himself for spotting it and is then immediately annoyed at himself for being pleased in the face of this carnage of cheer.

John counts fourteen Santa Clauses on various surfaces before he can’t remember if he counted the Elvis one already and gives up. There are seven stockings hung over the fireplace, six snow globes on the mantel (two of them are rotating), and a family of five stuffed polar bears under the table, either standing guard over or preparing to eat the Three Wise Men.

There is honestly so much assaulting their vision that it takes both of them longer than it otherwise would have to notice that Mrs. Hudson is currently snoozing on their sofa.

John starts to whisper “Okay, what should we…” but Sherlock flat out yells: “ _Mrs. Hudson!_ ”

Poor Mrs. H. snore-snorts as she startles awake, sitting up and patting her hair and apron into place on what seems like automatic pilot while she gets her bearings. Finally she looks up at them and blinks as a look of relief washes over her face.

“Oh, boys! You startled me. I swear, I just closed my eyes for a second…”

“What on earth have you done to our flat?” Sherlock demands as he moves around John and tugs his scarf loose.

“I thought I would add a few decorations here and there,” she says, but her voice is uncertain as she looks around the room like she’s never seen it before.

“A _few_? Have you been at your herbal soothers again?” Sherlock shrugs out of his coat and turns in place, unable to find a single available surface on which to deposit it.

“Well, to be honest, I was getting my boxes of decorations down from the attic, and I thought I would put a few things around your flat, but then my hip was acting up again. I didn’t take any more than usual.” She blinks again. “Did I really do all... this...?”

And then she starts to giggle. And then properly laugh. And it’s possible she sounds like she’s murdering an owl, which makes John start to giggle, and then properly laugh, and Sherlock stares at them in determined annoyance except eventually his eyes crinkle and soon all three of them are doubled over, getting short of breath and wiping at their eyes, and as soon as it dies down for a second and they are close to some semblance of control, one or two or all look up at the flat and lose their minds all over again.

Eventually they truly exhaust themselves, and then someone boils a kettle and then there’s tea and all three of them are settled into the sofa, and John asks Mrs. Hudson where the Elvis Santa actually came from, and Sherlock asks about the felted snowman, and she tells them about her trip to Amsterdam and her sister’s father-in-law’s craft experiments and her grandmother’s collection of ceramics, and her stories are so engaging (and the flat so well-lit) that none of them notice that it’s grown dark outside until John’s stomach growls noisily.

“Well, I’ll leave you to forage for your supper,” Mrs. Hudson sighs, pushing herself to her feet using the knees she finds on either side of her. “I’ll be back in the morning to clear all of this away.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, Mrs. Hudson,” John smiles up at her. Sherlock cuts his eyes at him. “You can leave it.”

“ _Some_ of it,” Sherlock says quickly. “The Santas can stay.”

“And the snow globes,” John adds.

“And _one_ of the trees,” Sherlock continues. “The skinny one, I think.”

“And the elf on the shelf.” (John has gone back to being proud that he found it.)

“And the mistletoe.”

“And the… what?” John forgets about the polar bears and stares at his flatmate, his eyes narrowing.

“The mistletoe can stay, don’t you think?” Sherlock meets John’s gaze, his eyes alight.

John stammers a bit, but eventually, “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

Mrs. Hudson smiles as she descends the stairs.

She wasn’t the one who hung the mistletoe.

She never tells.


End file.
